Immigration in American history

1
Immigration in American history a new
perspective

• Opening
• Centrality of immigration in American history
• Changing paradigms
• Changing immigration patterns
• Immigration and citizenship policies
• sources

2
Immigration and citizenship policies and other
events 1

• 1607 -- Founding of Jamestown, Virginia by
  English colonists.
• 1620 -- Voyage of the Mayflower, carrying
  Pilgrims to the New World.
• 1790 First naturalization act only free white
  men could be naturalized.

3
Immigration and citizenship policies and other
events 2

• 1846-47 -- Irish potato famine, causing
  large-scale Irish emigration.
• 1848 -- Gold discovery in California, starting
  the Gold Rush. Chinese
• immigrants (first Asians) were also about to
  arrive.
• Revolution in Germany, sending many immigrants
  to the United
• States.
• 1854 People vs Hall, a California Supreme Court
  case, which rules that no Chinese could give
  testimony against white people in the court of
  law.
• 1868 The 14th Amendment
• Impact
• Limitations Chinese
• 1868 The Burlingame Treaty between the United
  State and China
• 1875 -- The Page Act, restricting the entry of
  Chinese women.
• 1880 Anti-miscegenation laws in California
• prohibiting marriage between a white person and
  "a Negro, mulatto, or Mongolian.
• (Colonial origin Maryland in 1661) in many
  states, the law stayed in the books until
  recently racism nazism.
• 1882 -- The first Chinese exclusion act,
  terminating Chinese labor
• immigration for ten years (extended afterwards),
  and declaring
• Chinese immigrants ineligible for citizenship.
• 1886 -- Statue of Liberty dedicated, and at the
  same time the efforts to
• restrict immigration increased.

4
Immigration and citizenship policies and other
events 3

• 1907-08 -- The Gentlemens Agreement between the
  United States and
• Japan, ending Japanese labor immigration. But
  certain people, such
• as wives and children of those already in
  America could continue to
• arrive.
• 1910 -- January 21, The detention center on Angel
  Island (another AI site) (video) was put in
  use--until November 4, 1940.
• 1913 -- Alien land act passed in California.
• 1917 -- Literacy test established as a way to
  restrict general
• immigration, especially immigration from
  southern and eastern
• Europe. Creation of a Barred Zone in order to
  exclude Asian
• immigrants.
• 1922 -- The Cable Act, making it difficult for
  female U.S. citizens to
• marry non-citizen Asian immigrant men. Those
  who did would lose
• their citizenship.
• 1922 -- Takao Ozawa v. United States. The
  Supreme Court turned down
• the Japanese-born immigrants application for
  naturalization.
• 1923 -- United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. The
  Supreme Court decided
• that although Thind was an Aryan (white), he
  could not be naturalized.
• How was race defined?
• 1923 -- Numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases
  upholding the Alien Land Acts

5
Immigration and citizenship policies and other
events 4

• 1946 -- The War Bride Act, admitting
  foreign-born wives of U.S. service
• men.
• 1948 -- The Displaced Persons Act (modified two
  years later), intended to
• allow 400,000 Europeans to enter the U.S as
  refugees in four years.
• 1952 -- McCarran-Walter Act, preserving the quota
  system by creating
• the Asia-Pacific Triangle allowing Asian
  immigrants to be
• naturalized.
• 1960 -- Cuban refugees were paroled into the
  United States after the
• revolution led by Castro in 1959.
• 1965 -- The Immigration Reform Act, abolishing
  the quota system, setting
• a ceiling for both the Western and Eastern
  Hemispheres.
• 1975 -- The fall of Saigon and the beginning of
  Vietnamese and other
• southeastern

6
1790 naturalization act

• Act of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat 103-104) (Excerpts)
  That any alien, being a free white person, who
  shall have resided within the limits and under
  the jurisdiction of the United States for the
  term of two years, may be admitted to become a
  citizen thereof, on application to any common law
  court of record, in any one of the States wherein
  he shall have resided for the term of one year at
  least, and making proof to the satisfaction of
  such court, that he is a person of good
  character, and taking the oath or affirmation
  prescribed by law, to support the Constitution of
  the United States, which oath or affirmation such
  court shall administer and the clerk of such
  court shall record such application, and the
  proceedings thereon and thereupon such person
  shall be considered as a citizen of the United
  States. And the children of such persons so
  naturalized, dwelling within the United States,
  being under the age of twenty-one years at the
  time of such naturalization, shall also be
  considered as citizens of the United States. And
  the children of citizens of the United States,
  that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits
  of the United States, shall be considered as
  natural born citizens Provided, that the right
  of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose
  fathers have never been resident in the United
  States . . .

7
Foreign languages in the US 1990

• Population 5 years and older 230,445,777
• Only English 198,600,798
• non-English 31,844,979
• Total percent of non-English 13.8
• French (and Creoles) 1,930,404
• Spanish (and Creole) 17,345,064
• German 1,547,987
• Chinese 1,319,462
• Italian 1,308,648
• Tagalog 843,251
• Polish 723,483
• Korean 626,478
• Indo European 578,076
• Indic 555,126
• Vietnamese 507,069
• Portuguese (and Creole) 430,610
• Japanese 427,657
• Greek 388,260
• Arabic 355,150

8
Language 2005

• Total population 5 years old and
  over 268,110,961
• Speak only English 216,176,111
• Spanish or Spanish Creole 32,184,293
• Chinese
  2,300,467
• French (including Patois, Cajun) 1,383,432
• French Creole 548,986
• Tagalog
  1,376,632
• Vietnamese 1,142,328
• German
  1,120,256
• Korean
  983,954
• Russian
  812,404
• Italian 802,436
• Arabic 686,986
• Portuguese or Portuguese Creole 661,990
• Polish 607,585
• African languages
  581,947
• Hindi 462,371
• Japanese 457,836
• Persian 325,892

9
Sources

• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and
  Oral Histories
• http//solomon.imld.alexanderstreet.com/
• Articles on immigration from the Atlantic
• http//www.theatlantic.com/politics/immigrat/immig
  rat.htm
• Center for immigration studies
• http//www.cis.org/
• Search Immigration Emigration Records
• http//www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/default.asp
  x?rt40
• Angel Island
• http//www.angelisland.org/ http//www.aiisf.org/
  http//www.angelisland.org/immigr02.html
• Angel Island Poetry
• http//www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ang
  el/angel.htm
• Video
• http//images.google.com/imgres?imgurlhttp//rpp.
  english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/angel_
  island_1_lg.jpgimgrefurlhttp//rpp.english.ucsb.
  edu/classroom/ucsb-courses/english-104a/angel-isla
  nd-poemsh800w1000sz210hlenstart1um1us
  g__D9

10
Opening

• the future of the historical profession is in the
  hands of high school history teachers.

11
Centrality of immigration in US history

• "Once I thought to write a history of the
  immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the
  immigrants were American history --Oscar
  Handlin, The Uprooted The Epic Story of Great
  Migrations that Made the American People (1951.)
• A Nation of Immigrants by JFK (1964)

12
Centrality of immigration in American history

• Two quotes
• Studying immigration helps us better understand
  topics specified in California Content Standards,
  such as industrialization, urbanization, food,
  ethnicity, food, etc.
• It also helps us comprehend fundamental changes
  in American society.
• It helps us better understand political,
  socioeconomic and cultural changes in America
• The immigrants are changed by the New World and
  they have also changed America.
• The immigrants are changed by the New World and
  they have also changed America.
• It reveals the global connections in American
  life.
• We are at a historic moment

13
Fundamental changes in society

• Of particular importance is the change in the
  character and nature of American society.
• Who are included and excluded? Who should have
  the essential rights as an American?
• the class, gender, and especially dimensions of
  these questions.
• The meaning of American-ness has changed
  profoundly historically, as we will see. For a
  long time, Asians were regarded as non-American.

14
Changing paradigms in the study of immigration
history

• Every generation writes its own history.
• Assimilation theory the most powerful and most
  influential model for understanding immigrant
  life.
• Third-generation theory
• From The Uprooted to The Transplanted (By John
  Bodnar, 1985).
• Another important for the revision of history
  the demand by the descendants of newer
  immigrants.

15
Assimilation theory

• Robert Park (1864-1944)
• Chicago School of Sociology
• assimilation is inevitable and it has four
  progressive and irreversible stages contact,
  competition, accommodation, and assimilation.
• Influenced Chinese American scholars Paul Siu
  Rose Hum Lee

16
misassumptions of the assimilation theory

• There is a fixed, never-changing norm of being
  American.
• It is based on European immigrant experiences in
  the early 20 century.
• It focuses on the American setting.
• It believed that assimilation brings upward
  social mobility, assuming that everyone starts
  from the bottom.
• A tool used to judged the immigrants the good
  one assimilated and the bad ones do not.
• It is the ultimate goal of the immigrants, and it
  is inevitable.
• The immigrants were seen as a problem
  socioeconomically and culturally.

17
Third generation theory

• Marcus L. Hansen (1892-1938)
• The first generation the society regards them as
  a problem looked down upon them survival.
• The second generation pressure to assimilate at
  school constantly criticized and mocked
• tension in the family
• Eager to forget 100 Americanized.
• ( Nothing is more Yankee that a Yankeeized
  person of foreign descent.)
• The third generation more confident and eager to
  re-remember. that which the son wishes to
  forget the grandson wishes to remember.

18
comparison

• The Transplanted
• Continued connections with the Old World family
  ties and cultural traditions, etc.
• Part of capitalism development locally and
  globally. As a calculated response by families
  and individuals in response to such developments.
• Broader coverage of different immigrant groups,
  especially the new immigrants. Some coverage of
  Asian immigrants.

• The Uprooted
• Discontinuity from homeland and traditions
• Forced escape from hardships at home.
• Exclusively focused on European immigrants

19
Changing immigration patterns

• Shifting waves of immigration
• The saga continues
• The number of Asian Americans
• The Asian American experience challenges old
  assumptions

20
Shifting waves of immigration

• During the 17th and 18th centuries, most
  immigrants came from Western and Northern Europe.
• In the mid-19th century, large numbers of Irish
  immigrants arrived. So did Chinese immigrants
  the first large wave of immigrants from Asia.
  But it was soon banned.
• Beginning from the late 19th century, Southern
  and Eastern Europe became the primary source of
  immigrants.

21
Earlier Immigration Waves

• During The century of immigration (1820 to
  1924), nearly 36,000,000 immigrants came to the
  U.S.
• Peak decade 1900-1910, 8,800,000 arrived
• 1910 one of every seven was born outside the
  United States
• During the 18th 19th centuries, 20 of the
  businessmen, 20 of the scholars/scientists 46
  of the musicians were first generation immigrants.

22
New immigration patterns

• The post-1965 period belongs to the third world
• 1981 - 1990, over 7,338,000 immigrated to U.S.,
  only 9.6 of them were European. 38 of them are
  Asians.

23
Changing immigration patterns (post-1965)
24
Immigration numbers 1831-2005
25
1 of every 8 people is an immigrant

• one in eight U.S. residents is an immigrants
  today.
• In 1970 it was one in 21
• in 1980 it was one in 16
• in 1990 it was one in 13.
• Since 2000, 10.3 million immigrants have arrived
  the highest seven-year period of immigration in
  U.S. history. More than half of post-2000
  arrivals (5.6 million) are estimated to be
  illegal aliens.  
• The largest increases in immigrants were in
  California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois,
  Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, Georgia,
  North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

26
Chinese and other Asians
27
The Asian American experience challenges old
assumptions

• 1. The immigrant children will assimilate and be
  accepted automatically into American society.
  For a long time, Asian Americans were viewed
  outsiders. Unlike other groups, who became
  white over time, American-born Asians continued
  to face discrimination. Here, I should discuss
  the notion of whiteness.
• 2. Everyone starts at the bottom. A
  significant number of Asian immigrants came with
  middle class resources money or education. In
  terms of their income and material wealth, they
  can join the middle class in a short period of
  time.
• Many Asians came to America by way of higher
  education they came as students, mostly
  graduate students. An overwhelming majority of
  them study in the technical fields mathematics,
  engineering, sciences, and business.
• The hi-tech revolution that started to transform
  the American economy in the late 1990s, provided
  additional opportunities for such Asian
  Americans.
• 3. Race relations in the U.S. are simply between
  blacks and whites. The growing presence of
  Asians and Latinos helps us understand the
  complex nature of the issue of race in America.
  There have been Chinese in the south since the
  late 19th century. Back in the early 20th
  century, they were sometime classified as white
  and sometimes as black.
• 4. The immigrant experience is to be understood
  only in the context of American society. The
  Asian American experience has been characterized
  by transnationalism. Like many other before
  them, they continue to maintain strong ties to
  their ancestral lands, facilitating socioeconomic
  and cultural interactions between the United
  States and these lands.
• 5. Immigrants are passive recipients of American
  influence. They are also changing American
  culture food language, etc.